Nov. 29 (Bloomberg) -- Democrats are ready to install women
in some of the highest positions available to the minority party
in the U.S. House.

That will create a contrast with the party in power.

Unless Speaker John Boehner chooses a woman to run the
Ethics Committee or the panel in charge of cafeterias and
parking lots, there won’t be any chairwomen in the next
Congress, which begins in January.

“Studies have indicated that some blocks of women voters
were not with us” in the last election, said Florida
Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, a Republican who was the
only woman to lead a full committee in the House’s current
session. “We’ve got to be more inclusive and I hope that our
leadership gets that message and I think they will.”

She’s leaving her position as head of the Foreign Affairs
Committee because of term limits imposed by party rules.

The House Republican Conference confirmed the appointment
of 19 chairmen yesterday.

House Democrats are holding their organizational meeting
today. They’re ready to re-elect their current leadership slate,
which has been headed since 2003 by Representative Nancy Pelosi
of California.

In addition, two women -- Nita Lowey of New York and Marcy
Kaptur of Ohio -- are competing for the top minority-party job
on the Appropriations Committee, and women are in line to either
keep or be appointed to the top Democratic positions on the
Financial Services Committee; Rules Committee; Science, Space
and Technology Committee; and Small Business Committee.

Available Gavels

Republicans still have two committee leadership positions
open, and Speaker John Boehner of Ohio decides who will fill
those jobs.

Both positions are known more for headaches than for power:
chairman of the Ethics Committee, which judges lawmakers accused
of wrongdoing, and the Committee on House Administration, which
oversees the nuts and bolts of the multi-office complex on
Capitol Hill.

“It’s not over yet,” Ros-Lehtinen said in an interview.
“I think it’s a good opportunity to have some qualified female
candidates there.”

The all-male lineup in the Republican-majority House stands
in contrast to the Democratic-held Senate, where five women lead
full committees. That number will probably rise to at least six
in January.

Maybe Subcommittees

“I’m hopeful there will be some women running
subcommittees if the opportunity comes,” South Dakota
Republican Representative Kristi Noem said in an interview.

Noem said she expressed her concerns about the lack of
chairwomen to Boehner a few weeks ago.

Representative James Lankford of Oklahoma, a member of the
Republican Steering Committee, said the lack of women “didn’t
come up” when the panel that vets the candidates for committee
leadership deliberated Tuesday.

“It’s nice to try to manufacture a story that we’re anti-women, until you look at our conference and look at our
leadership structure,” he said yesterday in an interview.

The highest-ranking House Republican woman in the next
Congress will be Cathy McMorris Rodgers of Washington, who will
hold the No. 4 job, head of the Republican Conference. Also in
leadership will be Conference Vice Chairwoman Lynn Jenkins of
Kansas and Conference Secretary Virginia Foxx of North Carolina.

Only one woman, Representative Candice Miller of Michigan,
vied for a full-committee chairmanship. She lost to
Representative Michael McCaul of Texas, who will head the
Homeland Security Committee.

No Quotas

“I think you should always vote for the best person,”
said that committee’s departing chairman, term-limited Peter
King of New York. “We shouldn’t be basing these on quotas.”

McCaul called gender imbalance “an inside Washington
baseball story.”

“Half of our leadership is female; that’s a big sea
change,” he said. “You’re going to see them on the TV all the
time with leadership.”

Jenkins said the same thing. “Fifty percent of our
leadership is female, so I don’t think there’s an optics
problem,” she said in an interview.